2.1 Connect: Why SimpleLink?

[MUSIC PLAYING] Hey, guys. I'm Adrian.
Hey, I'm Nick.
And welcome to our first episode of Connect where we're bringing TI subject matter experts to talk about how we're enabling developers to introduce connectivity to their end applications. First off, we'll talk a little bit about the SimpleLink platform. Nick, do you want to talk a little bit about what makes up the SimpleLink platform and how it might help our developers?
Yeah, absolutely. So the SimpleLink platform is basically made up of three parts, all geared towards helping developers make connected applications. The first part is the hardware. So TI devices made up of Arm Cor MCUs and radios that support various connectivity stacks, such as Sub-1 GHz, BLE, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, Thread, Zigbee, and stuff like that.
Wow.
The first piece is the hardware.
OK. And these are devices with both an application processor as well as an integrated communication module.
Correct. Yes, single chip solutions for wireless applications.
OK, cool.
Yeah. And the second piece is the software. The software is a common SDK that all of these hardware pieces are developed on. So in theory, you can take your code developed with one connectivity stack and poured into another one in another piece of TI hardware.
The third piece is kind of development tools in an ecosystem. So that includes things like our cloud development tools that you can find on dev.ti.com. You can also find SimpleLink Academy, which is our university-style training programs that will help take you through some of how to use the devices and get up and running.
And the third real piece of that is the LaunchPads. Those are low cost evaluation modules. So you can buy them for $50 and under and get up and running on these devices right away.
That's great.
Yeah. And so the piece of that that I'd like to zoom in on and learn more from you about is that software piece that common codebase.
Yeah, for sure. We've got the white board here conveniently placed. So I'll talk a little bit about how we've structured the software to enable some of that code portability that you're talking about. So at the foundation of all of this is, again, the SimpleLink devices, which are integrated with various connectivity options from Wi-Fi, Ethernet, ZigBee, Thread, Sub-1 GHz, and Bluetooth, as you mentioned earlier.
But what we wanted to enable was a modular software framework that they call the SimpleLink SDK that could enable code portability across this portfolio of connected microcontrollers. Some of the key components of the SimpleLink SDK are TI drivers. This is a collection of intuitive APIs for accessing things like ITC, SPY, your common peripherals.
And by providing intuitive APIs that are code portable, this allows developers to write their application once for Ethernet, for example, and easily port that to Wi-Fi, ZigBee or Thread, or any form of connectivity. And this allows them to build out a portfolio of connected devices with minimal reinvestment.
So this TI drivers layer kind of helps expose some of the hardware features of the devices in a common way across the different hardware platforms.
You got it. Yep. And that's how we're enabling a 100% code portability on any application code that's built on top of TI drivers. So a specific use case as to where that might be useful, if we think about a Wi-Fi connected thermostat, I might take our CC32xx, which is our Wi-Fi enabled microcontroller, build code for talking to temperature sensors, LCD displays, motor drivers, whatever that might be, and leverage TI drivers to write all of that code.
And once I've built out my thermostat, I can easily reuse that temperature sensor code, for example, to build out sub-GHz edge nodes. And the only difference would be the middleware or stacks that I would use within my application. But the application code used for reading those sensors, talking to a display, that's going to be portable.
And the main benefit here is this allows developers to more quickly build out a portfolio of connected products. So they're not just releasing one SKU to the market but potentially multiple SKUs to take over an entire space.
So if you want to leverage in your thermostat example, a remote sensor that's built on sub 1 gigahertz while your thermostat's built on Wi-Fi, you're basically saying you can take that application code you've developed, drop it next to the different stack. So for instance, from the Wi-Fi to Sub-1 GHz in your code port so you don't have to duplicate development resources.
Absolutely. A good example of that is how were architecting our SimpleLink SDK plugins. For example, one of the plugins that we have in our portfolio is our sensor and actuator plugin. It's a collection of intuitive APIs for accessing external components such as temperature sensors, humidity sensors, accelerometers, et cetera.
So in the case of our thermostat, we have a plugin that allows us to interface with our TMP116, which is the world's most accurate temperature sensor from TI. And by writing the code for this on top of TI drivers, that application code will port across any one of these connectivity options. And the main benefit here, again, is to enable developers to be super nimble.
Depending on their customer use case, any one of these connectivity protocols might be more beneficial than the other. And being able to move that code and software investment from one device to the next is going to allow them to hit the market more quickly to bring differentiated applications to the application space.
So this whole thing's developed with developers in mind, what can make their life easier, how do they scale, get to market faster, that sort of thing.
You've got it. Yeah. Anything we can do to allow developers to focus on differentiating their application. And we'll take care of the plumbing, if you will. You know, all of this stuff is, again, the modular building blocks that they can use, mix and match, to build whatever it is they're trying to bring to market.
Very cool. All right, thanks Adrian. Thanks for diving a little deeper into the SimpleLink software. That cleared up a lot for me about how it works and what the idea behind it is. And thank you guys for joining the very first episode of Connect. If you'd like to learn more about what Adrian and I were talking about, you can visit ti.com/simplink or ti.com/simplelinksdk.
If you'd like to interact, ask questions, submit topics, you can tweet at me @SensorToCloud and give any sort of ideas that you have there. And please make sure to tune in next week. Our next episode is going to be a hands-on thread demo, which is one of the pieces of the SimpleLink platform. It's a very cool demo so don't miss it. Thanks, guys.
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